Writing about Violence in a Realm of Peace and Piety - A study on Violence in Sozomen's and Socrates Scholasticus' Ecclesiastical Histories

在他的《教会史》的第四本书中，索佐门讲述了殉道者和马西亚努斯的故事。他们被判谋杀一名罗马将军和煽动叛乱以除掉君士坦丁堡的异端主教的罪名成立，两人都被处决。虽然Sozomen意识到这种行为的邪恶，但他并没有试图证明其理由或清除被告的任何指控，而是承认他们作为烈士的地位，并继续描述在他们的坟墓里发生的奇迹（IV, 3）。索佐门通过讲述个人追求正义与叛逆法律发生冲突的故事，似乎将宗教义务主义置于国家理性之上。这几乎不符合一个试图在罗马帝国内传播教会与国家之间的和平与团结的作者的普遍形象。相反，这个轶事向我们介绍了一个复杂的暴力和合法性的景观，成熟的进一步研究。由于缺乏完整的现存4世纪和5世纪早期的史学，Sozomen的教会史和他同时代的苏格拉底的同名作品构成了历史事件的重要信息来源，更不用说最近蓬勃发展的古代晚期暴力研究了。无论是分析宗教狂热者暴力行为背后的理由，还是分析异教徒邪教场所的破坏和转变过程，几乎每一次对这一时期暴力行为的研究都必须利用教会历史学家的作品。尽管如此，他们的著作很少成为任何持续调查的主要主题。关于索佐门和苏格拉底的有限参考书目的大部分都致力于他们对单一皇帝的描绘或他们对正统的立场，而教会历史学家对暴力的处理尚未得到任何长期的关注。这个研究项目的目的是分析Sozomen和苏格拉底的教会历史中对暴力的处理。考虑到上述轶事，指导问题将是两位作者在罗马教会和国家内部冲突的法律，传统和魅力权威的形成和分解中，暴力的争议合法性所起的作用。要解决的暴力类型主要来自宗教争议，包括基督徒和异教徒之间的血腥冲突，主教在主教会议上的口头对抗以及皇帝和官员在信仰问题上使用的强制措施。教会历史学家有选择地编纂了大量的资料来源，尤其是圣徒传记、书信和律法，要么逐字引用，要么重新措辞。将原始文献对暴力的态度与教会历史学家的新的、被操纵的叙述进行对比，将使我能够确定、比较并将两位作者对暴力的态度置于背景中。我的项目成果不仅对梳理两位作者个人文学议程的当前研究大有裨益，这对我们理解这一时期两位关键的历史“看门人”至关重要。它还将有助于正在进行的关于古代晚期权威形成模式转变的讨论，在这个时期，一种新的基督教暴力和合法性概念被确立，只有在革命时代才受到挑战，从而形成了现代社会形成的背景。

In the fourth book of his Ecclesiastical History Sozomen reports the story of Martyrius and Marcianus. Found guilty of having murdered a Roman general and instigating a revolt in order to get rid of the heretic bishop of Constantinople, both were executed. Although Sozomen is aware of the wickedness of this deed he does not try to justify its rationale or to clear the accused of any charges, but rather acknowledges their status as martyrs and proceeds to describe the miracles that occurred at their grave (IV, 3). By narrating a story in which the personal strive for justice clashes with laws on treason, Sozomen seems to put religious vigilantism above the reason of state. This hardly fits the prevalent picture of an author who endeavoured to propagate peace and unity between church and state within the Roman Empire. Instead this anecdote introduces us to a complex landscape of violence and legitimacy ripe for further study. Due to a lack of a complete extant historiography for the 4th and early 5th centuries the Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen and the same-titled work of his contemporary Socrates Scholasticus form crucial sources of information for historical events, not to mention for the study of violence in Late Antiquity, which has recently flourished. Whether one analyses the rationale behind violent acts of religious zealots or the destruction and conversion processes of pagan cult sites, almost every examination of violence in this time-period has to make use of the church historians' works. Despite this, their writings have rarely been the primary subject of any sustained investigation. The greater part of the limited bibliography on Sozomen and Socrates is devoted to their portrayal of single emperors or their stance on orthodoxy, while the church historians' treatment of violence has not yet received any prolonged attention. The aim of this research project is to analyse the handling of violence within the Ecclesiastical Histories of Sozomen and Socrates. With the above anecdote in mind, the guiding question will be what role both authors ascribed the contested legitimacy of violence in the formation and decomposition of conflicting legal, traditional and charismatic authority within the Roman church and state.The types of violence to be addressed mainly emanate from religious controversies and cover bloody clashes between Christian and pagan laymen, verbal confrontations between bishops at synods and coercive measures used by emperors and officials in matters of faith. Church historians selectively compiled numerous sources, especially hagiographies, letters and laws, either quoted verbatim or rephrased. Contrasting the original documents' approach to violence with the new, manipulated narrative of the church historians will allow me to pin down, compare and contextualise both authors' attitude towards violence. The outcomes of my project will not only be of great benefit to current research teasing out the individual literary agenda of both authors, which is crucial for our understanding of the two key historical "gatekeepers" of this period. It will also contribute to the ongoing discussion on shifting patterns of authority formation in Late Antiquity, during a time when the course was set for a new, Christian concept of violence and legitimacy, only challenged in the Age of Revolutions and thus forming the background against which modern society has been shaped.